quality time ...

what it is ...
* inborn need of togetherness
* human interaction
* close ties
* need for connectedness
* undivided attention

what it is not ...
* being with yet doing something else
* being with but in the teaching or service mode

Q: Are you energized when you spend quality time with others, or does it tend to deplete you emotionally?
Q: With whom have you spent quality time this week? Was your time together primarily quality conversation or quality activities?

As humans, we have a fundamental desire to connect with others. We may be in the presence of people all day long, but we do not always feel connected.

Mass murderer Charles Manson said, "Most of the people at the ranch that you call the 'family' were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road. Their parents kicked them out, so I did the best I could and took them on my garbage dump."

dialects ...
quality conversations...
Quality conversation is quite different from the love language words of affirmation. Affirming words focus on what we are saying, where as quality conversation focuses fully on what we are hearing. If I am sharing my love for you by means of quality time and we are going to spend that time in conversation, it means I will focus on drawing you out, listening sympathetically to what you have to say. I will ask questions, not in badgering manner but with a genuine desire to understand your thoughts, feelings, and desires.

If I invest thirty minutes in such conversation with you, I have given you thirty minutes of my life. Quality converstion communicates that I care.

quality listening
1) Maintain eye contact when you are listening to someone.
2) Don't engage in other activities while you are listening to another individual.
3) Listen for feelings.
4) Observe body language.
5) Refuse to interrupt.
6) Ask reflective questions. reflect back a statement made into a ?
7) Express understanding.
8) Ask what would be helpful.
Twice as much time will be spent in listening as in talking. The dividends, however, are enormous. The person feels respected, understood, and loved, which is the goal of quality conversation.

quality activities
"I feel most loved and appreciated by ______________ when ____________."

Quality activities may include anything in which one or both of you have an interest. The emphasis is not on what you are doing but on why you are doing it. The purpose is to experience something together, to walk away from it feeling, ' he cares about me; he was willing to do something with me that I enjoy, and he did it with a positive attitude.' That is love, and for some people, it is love's loudest voice.

When an activity is to be a means of expressing love, the most important thing will always be not the activity, but being with the other person.

One of the by-products of quality activities is that they provide a memory bank from which to draw in the years ahead.

It may require you to give up some individual activities. It will mean you do some things that you don't particularly enjoy, but it will give you pleasures of loving, entering, into another's world, and learning to speak the love language of quality time.
fr: Gary Chapman's ''The Five Love Languages for Singles

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Quality Time comes in second to my primary Love Language of Words of Affirmation especially quality conversation. Hey, I will take quality activities too. I love to ask people questions. I love to listen to them. I like to know how they have gotten to today. I like to know how they think and learn. I want to know why they act in the manner that they do. I love to listen. I love to learn about them. I love the give and take. I love how it makes me feel.

The one thing that I thought was interesting was the one question... 'When you spend quality time with others, does it deplete you?' I know of someone who gives and gives. He goes into isolation mode when he feels depleted and this is not his primary love language! I could never understand this. Sure I get tired of people and just want to hide out for a while, but to isolate myself from others I just was not allowed to do that at home. As an adult we must understand balance and take care of ourselves. I feel strongly that if you find yourself depleted, you over did it. You must spend quality time with yourself. You must spend quality time with others who boost your moral. You must spend quality time with God the Ultimate Source.

So true that if I spend this quality time with you, that it was time well spent of my life for you. This is a good give and take.

love tank : acts of service